PodCastle

PodCastle is the world’s first audio fantasy magazine. Weekly, we broadcast the best in fantasy short stories, running the gammut from heart-pounding sword and sorcery, to strange surrealist tales, to gritty urban fantasy, to the psychological depth of magical realism. Our podcast features authors including N.K. Jemisin, Peter S. Beagle, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Jim C. Hines, and Cat Rambo, among others. Terry Pratchett once wrote, “Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.” Tune in to PodCastle each Tuesday for our weekly tale, and spend the length of a morning commute giving your imagination a work out.

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PodCastle 535: The Threadbare Magician — Part 1





* Author : Cat Rambo
* Narrator : Graeme Dunlop
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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Originally published in Genius Loci: Tales of the Spirit of Place.


Note that this is one part of a two-part episode. The second part will release on Tuesday, August 21, 2018.
Rated R, for cursing wizards and magical desires.
See below for links to Cat’s projects:
Cat’s Patreon.
The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers live and on-demand classes aimed at fantasy and science fiction writers. Fun fact: co-editors Khaalidah and Jen met at one of Cat’s workshops. They are highly recommended!
Some books and collections for sale: Hearts of Tabat, Neither Here Nor There, Moving from Idea to Finished Draft.
The Threadbare Magician
by Cat Rambo
Old fabric holds smells better than the cloth of more recent decades. New stuff is all chemicals. It rubs the roof of your mouth like steel wool if you sniff too hard, bites like a spell’s sting.
Older silks, wools, cottons — the organics — hold household odors. Cedar and cinnamon, turmeric and garlic. Perfumes you can no longer find, like L’Origan or Quelques Fleurs. Camphorated moth balls or talcum powder. Rarely the whiff of a person, a smell lingering long after every other scrap of their DNA has vanished from this earth.
Most often just the lilac assault left by a hasty dry-clean. But the other times make it worth it.
I pulled the green XL circle aside with my thumb and kept going widdershins, into the Ls. So far the Value Village’s rack had yielded only two possibilities: an XXL black with a bamboo-patterned weave, cream-colored dragons curled and coiled amid sun-ridden clouds and an XL crimson rayon whose flame-pattern suited it to throw-away magic. A protective cloak perfect for next week’s trip to Portland.
I fingered through the fabrics, searching for silk among the rayon and cotton. Nope, nope, nope.
A pretty day outside. One of the last days before summer slanted to the other side of the clock and the days began shrinking into the gray days of Seattle fall. A day for turning up the radio and blasting “Dani California” until the sound came up through your bones. A day for wishing you were in love. Or some reasonable facsimile.
My own shirt was printed with umbrellas. Parasols really, pinwheeled against a gray sky and white cumulus clouds. Protection, and even though it was newer and untested, I trusted it to ward off anything. Like wearing magic protective gloves, more supple than lead-lined canvas but surely at least that solid.
Shouldn’t have trusted it.
The spell struck up from a black background, red serpents, scales lined with scallops as blue as the sky outside. Slashing bites along the outside of my left hand, locking on, tails sticking straight out as they attached themselves.
I lurched sideways.
The floor crashed up into my face, thunked against my forehead in painful collision.
Then I was gone.

When I awoke, I was in a car’s back seat alone,


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 August 14, 2018  43m